Does morality exist?

[AntiTheist]

The way you privatize meaning makes communication impossible, unless you want to grant my thesis that some meanings can be shared–and that’s all I need to make my point against your reductions. So are there any meanings that can be shared or not? What do you think? If there are shared meanings between people, then when two different token utterances of “pass the mustard” are made by two different people, there is a common meaning. But this entails meaning is independent of people’s conceptions of them and independent of the objects they are talking about. Like I said in my previous post #219, this is precisely why meanings “can’t exist only in the head,” because when you completely privatize *all *meanings like this, meaning is no longer a public element we can discuss and you, Anti, will be left without an explanation for our success in communication. Why is this not obvious with your persistent reductions? Are you just biting the bullet on this one that there are NO meanings that are shared in our linguistic discourses?

Thanks for highlighting this. I think this is the center point of the matter, and I will address it when I’m not dead tired.

See you on Monday.

 

[Syntax]

It’s obviously true that one person can have a pleasing feeling about something and another person can have a not-pleasing feeling about the same thing. You’re confusing the map for the territory and spinning yourself in circles doing it.

No, you are misreading my post and then claiming your own misunderstanding is my own fault. I was referring to liking feelings of two different people with respect to one and the same object, not of a good and bad feelings of two different people with respect to one and same object.

Originally posted by Syntax:
If a concept can be shared among many individuals, does this concept exist over and above each individual’s conception of it, or is it identical to the set of each individuals’ conception of it so that its existence is dependent on each individual?

I don’t agree that concepts can be perfectly “shared” between minds, as I’ve indicated.

Therefore, communication is impossible. Q.E.D --“AntiTheist”

 

[AntiTheist]

See you on Monday.

Or see you again tonight after the answer I used to give to this question popped back into my mind.

Our concepts of things are abstractions from our experiences. They’re unique to each person – my mental image of a “mustard bottle” probably differs from yours in a thousand different ways – but they coincide on enough large points that we can talk about them and have a fair idea of what each of us is talking about. For example, I’ll bet your idea of “mustard bottle” is yellow, and that’s because the idea that each one of us has of “mustard bottle” is abstracted from similar experiences of similar data points.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s some magical concept of the “mustard bottle” that exists outside of our heads. “Mustard bottle” is the label we put on this idea that we’ve abstracted from our individual experience. My idea of a mustard bottle – similar though it may be to other peoples’ ideas of a mustard bottle – is unique to me and will die with me. But it’s similar enough that communication is possible.

As I said, you’re confusing the map with the territory. You think that concepts are things, and it’s really mixing you up.

 

[Syntax]

Or see you again tonight after the answer I used to give to this question popped back into my mind.

Our concepts of things are abstractions from our experiences. They’re unique to each person – my mental image of a “mustard bottle” probably differs from yours in a thousand different ways – **but they coincide on enough large points **that we can talk about them and have a fair idea of what each of us is talking about. For example, I’ll bet your idea of “mustard bottle” is yellow, and that’s because the idea that each one of us has of “mustard bottle” is abstracted from similar experiences of similar data points.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s some magical concept of the “mustard bottle” that exists outside of our heads. “Mustard bottle” is the label we put on this idea that we’ve abstracted from our individual experience. My idea of a mustard bottle – **similar though it may be to other peoples’ ideas of a mustard bottle **-- is unique to me and will die with me. But it’s similar enough that communication is possible.

You think that concepts are things, and it’s really mixing you up.

I never said they were physical things; they are abstract entities. So are you claiming concepts don’t exist at all? So even though meanings can be shared for which concepts are about they don’t exist? So tell me: which entity satisfies the operation 2-squared? Nothing? Is it 4 oranges? 4 apples? Both 4 oranges and 4 apples? That’s not right. Because the operation admits of one and only one answer: 4.

The similar aspect of shared meanings you are granting is all I need to demonstrate that they are independent of the mind’s conception of them. If the shared part of the concept of “beautiful” is identical to John’s, Bill’s, and Bob’s conception of them, then when John dies the concept ceases to exist. But certainly the concept still exists in Bill’s and Bob’s minds. Therefore, the concept is not dependent on John, because it still exists in the minds of Bill and Bob.

As I said, you’re confusing the map with the territory.

You’ve said this twice now–not sure what it’s supposed to mean. Please explain the metaphor.

 

[Syntax]

What entity satisfies the operation 2-squared? Wait, nothing does? hmmm…

Numbers are a great example of how the demonstration for the existence of a non-observable abstract entity works. We can show that numbers exist through a process of elimination of the alternatives. Numbers can’t be physical objects, nor mental concepts, nor linguistic entities such as “labels.” So numbers can only be numbers. So they exist.

Notice that the operation 2-squared admits of **one and only one **answer to make it true, so the answer can’t be 3, 5, 1, but only 4. It is not a formula like x-squared which can admit of many possible answers. This is an important observation to make.

First, Anti has said in one place that numbers are labels for concepts. So the label “2” = 2. Is that right? No. He confuses the signifier for the concept signified, the term “2” for the concept 2.

Second, he says number-concepts are “derived from physical realities”–presumably, empirical abstractions from observables. He is right the number 2 is an abstraction, but he is wrong to think it is an abstraction from experience, since the concept of the number 2 is not directly observed anywhere in my field of experience like I can observe the color red which I can extract from several instances of red things to form a concept by which I can apply this very concept to several tokens of the same color. So how does this abstraction of the concept of 2 arise if I don’t observe it? When I see two objects before me, what makes them two objects rather than three objects, and how do I know this? Experience just presents itself to me as a random flux of fleeting and disorganized sensations without structure. The activity of the human mind is what imposes this organization and structure onto sense-experience–neuroscience and psychology have shown this numerous times. So there is nothing in the experience itself which organizes itself into the conception of two objects–rather, the abstraction requires the activity of my mind. So it can only be the innate spontaneous activity of the mind which applies the innate concept of 2 onto my disorganized experience making it possible for me to recognize 2 objects in my experience rather than three. The concept is innate and cannot be derived from experience, but is presupposed in all experience and makes it possible for me to perform the operation of addition on the multitude of objects presented to me.

Take my question toward AntiTheist’s view above. What satisfies the operation 2-squared? Is it physical objects? Perhaps 4 oranges? 4 apples? or maybe 4 people? Or do all of these objects satisfy the operation at once?

So what is the answer? It can’t be each* set *of four things–4 apples, 4 oranges, or 4 people–that satisfies the operation at once, because then we would have four individuals from each set, making, eight, twelve, or infinitely many things. And then the operation 2-squared=8, 12, and so on… would be false.

So suppose it is just the four physical oranges that satisfies this operation. But then suppose we smash these oranges to many tiny bits, so that 2-squared=25, 34, orangey tiny bits. Then the operation is false. So it is absurd to suppose that the truth of the operation is entirely dependent on the contingent existence of those four oranges. Moreover, if it can only be the oranges that satisfy the operation, then the 4 apples cannot satisfy it because we stipulated that it is the physical oranges, not the physical apples that satisfies it. But surely we can apply the operation 2-squared to multiple kinds of entities, yes? So what is it, really, that is satisfying this operation which admits of one and only one answer or value?

Maybe it is the concept of 4, that satisfies the operation. But wait, aren’t concepts mind-dependent abstract entities (according to Anti)? If they are, then concepts cease to exist when the human mind ceases to exist. Suppose John dies and ceases to exist altogether. Then the concept of 4 whose existence was dependent John’s mind, also ceases to exist with him. Therefore, there is no longer a value that the operation designates and it is therefore false because “2-squared=nothing” is false. But surely the operation 2-squared=4 is still true when John dies. The truth of the operation is certainly not dependent on John’s own existence. That’s just as absurd as the truth of the operation depending on the contingent existence of four oranges.

So mental concepts and physical objects don’t uniquely satisfy the operation 2-squared.

Therefore, the only entity I can think of that satisfies it is 4. So the number 4 exists. If it did not exist, the operation designates nothing, admits of no answer, and is either meaningless or false.

 

[Syntax]

Or see you again tonight after the answer I used to give to this question popped back into my mind.

Our concepts of things are abstractions from our experiences. They’re unique to each person – my mental image of a “mustard bottle” probably differs from yours in a thousand different ways – but they coincide on enough large points that we can talk about them and have a fair idea of what each of us is talking about. For example, I’ll bet your idea of “mustard bottle” is yellow, and that’s because the idea that each one of us has of “mustard bottle” is abstracted from similar experiences of similar data points.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s some magical concept of the “mustard bottle” that exists outside of our heads. **“Mustard bottle” is the label we put on this idea **that we’ve abstracted from our individual experience. **My idea **of a mustard bottle – similar though it may be to other peoples’ ideas of a mustard bottle – **is unique to me **and will die with me. But it’s **similar enough **that communication is possible.

As I said, you’re confusing the map with the territory. You think that concepts are things, and it’s really mixing you up.

Again, Anti equivocates on *tokens *and types: His “idea” of a mustard bottle is “unique” to him and will “die with him”, but “similar enough” to other people’s ideas.

If his idea is unique to him and it will die with him, then he is talking about his token of the same idea-type which he shares with me. Yes, that token will die with him. But the idea-type will not die when he dies, because the idea-type will still exist in my mind as a token. But there is no reason to suppose the idea-type is any more dependent on my own token conception or anyone elses, than it is dependent on Anti’s own token-conception. Therefore, idea-types exist independent of minds.

 

[Syntax]

I like to call them “ostrich nominalists,” a coin termed by Armstrong in addressing antirealists, who deny that there is any need to explain the phenomenon where two objects seem to share the same property as in “the red fire-truck is the same color as this apple.” They will say there is nothing more to this statement than the two facts that,

the fire-truck is red
the apple is red

Let a and b stand for the fire-truck and the apple respectively, so that

a is red
b is red.

Given that (a) and (b) are both red, we can by a convenient abbreviation say that “a and b are both red.” And if a is red and b is red and c is red, we can by a convenient abbreviation say that "a,* b,* and c are all of them red. But nothing here justifies us in talking of sameness of type yet.

So such skepticism cannot be maintained if we are going to stop here without an account of the notion of type. It is true that “a and b are both red” is an abbreviation of “a is red and b is red”, but the abbreviation does not hold just for these particular sentences, much less for the above sentence tokens, but is a rule-governed linguistic transformation which we are capable of applying to an indefinite multiplicity of sentences. What is the rule? It goes something like this. Suppose that we are given sentences of the form “a is___, b is___, and c is___.” If the three blanks are filled by the same predicate, it is permitted to rewrite the sentence as “a and b and c are all___,” with that **same predicate **in the new blank. But “same predicate” here is a type-notion. It is not meant that the very same predicate-token be plugged successively into the three gaps! This is nonsense because then each predicate would then mean different things, which it clearly doesn’t!

Some account must be given, then, reductive or otherwise, to make sense of what the heck the same *predicate-type *means. For we surely understand this notion when we use it in ascribing the same type to two or more different particulars. Here’s another example.

Quiz: How many times does following sentence occur?

I will not pull Susie’s hair in class.
I will not pull Susie’s hair in class.
I will not pull Susie’s hair in class.

The answer is once. When Johnny is bad in class and the teacher tells him to write this sentence 50 times on the chalk board, she is telling him to write the same sentence 50 different times, not 50 different sentences one time. Big difference! But an antirealist will say same-sentence-types don’t exist, everything is a token. Yeah.

So without the notion of a “type” we lose the following things:
(1) Explanation for apparent similarities in phenomena–in the external world and in human behavior, whether moral, scientific, philosophical, or aesthetic.
(2) Communication with sameness of meanings.
(3) Truth-conditions for propositions which make implicit reference to abstract entities such as in, “Humility is a virtue,” “red resembles orange more than it resembles blue,” or “2+2=4” Even for W.V.Quine, the biggest nominalist/anti-realist who ever lived, could not paraphrase these statements which have implicit reference to properties and universals to statements about particulars without losing the sentences’ original meanings.

Take, for example, "humility is a virtue. An antirealist will claim “humility” as an abstract property refers to nothing at all. But how do they propose we understand what this statement means? The burden of proof is on them to explain its actual meaning, if it is saying something different than we originally intended. They might say that statements about humility are really statement about individuals, not abstract entities. So let’s try the translation. Try reducing the statement

(I) Humility is a virtue

to a statement made about individuals, as in,

(II) Humble persons are virtuous.

(I) is perfectly compatible with some humble people who are not virtuous. Even more, (I) is compatible with no humble persons being virtuous. So it could be that though every single individual is humble, each one is also so full of so many other glaring faults that they are not virtuous people. So (I) fails to entail (II) because they don’t mean the same thing.

Suppose also, that it was true and well-known to be true, that tall people are always virtuous so that,

(II) Tall persons are virtuous.

But this is exactly parallel to,

(II) Humble persons are virtuous.

But no one would suggest it was true, therefore, that

(I) Tallness is a virtue

So, not only does (I) fail to entail (II) which was the first objection, but also (II) fails to entail (I).

For these, and many other reasons, I cannot rightly consider nominalism/anti-realism/noncognitivism to be a plausible view at all. It just asks from us to believe too much counterintuitive nonsense, and is completely contrary to human language, semantics, behavior, explanatory practice, knowledge, communication, and understanding. All these counterintuitive results should be sufficient reason to reject noncognitive antirealism, but I’m appalled that some people can’t see otherwise.

 

[Leela]

I like to call them “ostrich nominalists,” a coin termed by Armstrong in addressing antirealists, who deny that there is any need to explain the phenomenon where two objects seem to share the same property as in “the red fire-truck is the same color as this apple.” They will say there is nothing more to this statement than the two facts that,

the fire-truck is red
the apple is red

Let a and b stand for the fire-truck and the apple respectively, so that

a is red
b is red.

Given that (a) and (b) are both red, we can by a convenient abbreviation say that “a and b are both red.” And if a is red and b is red and c is red, we can by a convenient abbreviation say that "a,* b,* and c are all of them red. But nothing here justifies us in talking of sameness of type yet.

I don’t think we need Platonic notions of types to unravel such sentences. Words put things in relation to other things can be thought of as relations all the way down rather than having essences or substances to which all their properties are supposed to adhere. Saying that the firetrucks and apples are both red is putting firetrucks and apples in relation to one another. We don’t have to imagine an extra term “redness” as existing “out there” to make these sentences true and worry about establishing correct isomorphisms between my ideas, your ideas, and reality if such sentences are tools for coping with reality rather than representations of reality. Isn’t it enough to say that we understand one another if we both use apples and firetrucks in many of the same ways?

Best,
Leela

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Isn’t it enough to say that we understand one another if we both use apples and firetrucks in many of the same ways?

I’ve never driven an apple, nor eaten a fire truck, but to each his own.

 

[AntiTheist]

Well, well, you just can’t seem to get rid of me. As it turns out, I have a little bit of downtime and access to the internet, so I’m going to expand on my thoughts before heading out. And since I’m not exhausted right now, this will make for somewhat clearer reading than my posts last night. My apologies for not having the time to read and respond to other thoughts in the thread:

Essentially, all concepts are formed through induction from our experience. We isolate similar elements of many different experiences to form an “idea” of something. For example, I have encountered dozens of mustard bottles in my life, and from those experiences, I’ve isolated the similar properties they all shared and come up with the idea of a mustard bottle.

Unsurprisingly, someone else who has had very similar experiences of very similar mustard bottles is going to have a very similar idea of “mustard bottle.” Also unsurprisingly, someone who’s never experienced a mustard bottle or who has experienced only one oddly shaped mustard bottle – or who comes from a place where mustard bottles look entirely different – is going to have a very different idea of a mustard bottle.

The idea is “shared” between me and another person to the extent that our ideas are very similar – taking their formation from very similar experiences – but that in no way indicates that there is some magic concept of a mustard bottle that exists apart from the mind of either one of us. If all human minds vanished tomorrow, then the idea of “mustard bottle” would cease to exist, though mustard bottles themslves (i.e. the experiential “things” from which we abstract the idea) would continue to exist.

There’s a similar phenomenon with mental states. I have had tons of experiences I enjoyed. I’m able to isolate a common element of those experiences and label it “pleasing.” Whether my experience of pleasing is exactly the same as another’s experience of “pleasing” is something we can never determine. The experiences must be similar enough for us to be able to communicate, but we obviously can never know what someone else’s mental state is exactly like.

I imagine that in very primitive man, phrases like, “I like” were used to communicate very immediate and physical things, thus making the meaning clear to others (who could infer the meaning from context and from comparison to their own experiences). Over time, “I like” became applied to more abstract things, once a common meaning was written down and established.

Here’s the point: value claims do have a consistent meaning. “I like” always and everywhere means, “The person speaking enjoys X.” Meanwhile, “I dislike” always and everywhere means, “The person speaking does not enjoy X.”

When one person likes X and another person dislikes X, there’s no contradiction at all. The meaning of “like” is consistent. It’s the application of it that differs. And meanwhile, “like” is a concept that only exists in people’s minds, referring to mental states that are probably similar but in no way absolutely identical (and there’s no way to tell that anyway).

As a final note, I’ll point out that what I’ve expressed is not a specifically atheist position. I happen to be an atheist advancing this position, but there’s nothing stopping an atheist from being a moral realist or even a Platonist or an idealist. Atheism is only a position on the existence of gods.

Regards, and I’ll talk to you all on Monday.

 

[Syntax]

I don’t think we need Platonic notions of types to unravel such sentences. Words put things in relation to other things can be thought of as relations all the way down rather than having essences or substances to which all their properties are supposed to adhere. Saying that the firetrucks and apples are both red is putting firetrucks and apples in relation to one another. **We don’t have to imagine an extra term “redness” as existing “out there” to make these sentences true **and worry about establishing correct isomorphisms between my ideas, your ideas, and reality if such sentences are tools for coping with reality rather than representations of reality. Isn’t it enough to say that we understand one another if we both use apples and firetrucks in many of the same ways?

Let me make this clear: colors clearly don’t exist in the empirical world. But they are qualitative properties of mental states, and it is the representational character of these properties existing in the mind that make these statements “a is red and b is red,” not only true, but true for the same reason, namely, that the sense-data we share with respect to both the firetruck and the apple, both have a common property, a.k.a., redness.

Responding to the bold-faced I highlighted: you are only repeating the position I just argued against. Where’s your counter-argument? I expect one, otherwise I’m just wasting my time. Perhaps you should re-read my post? I said that

a is red
b is red

make statements about a and b each of which instantiates a numerically different token of red. But without the additional notion of type, we cannot account for the truth of the following statement,

a and b are both red,

because “red” mentiioned in this latter statement must be a type, not a token.

conclusion: there is something a and b (or the mental representations of them) have in common, namely being-red.

 

[Syntax]

I’ve decided simply not to take Anti’s posts seriously anymore. Everyone should watch the funny Monty Python skit on YouTube titled “Argument Clinic” which really reflects the situation we are in.

E.g., here is progression of the argument from start-to-finish:

First, Anti says moral statements have no meaning. I show this absurd. In response, he claims that he “mispoke,” and didn’t really mean what he said.

Second, Anti explicitly says he is defining evaluative terms such as “beautiful” as being identical in *meaning *to “x finds y pleasing.” I show this is a contradiction. Anti then subsequently denies he was defining the word “beautiful” at all but merely suggesting “beautiful” has infinite meanings for the set of all persons who utilize the “label” or “term.”

Third, I show this has the further consequence of making communication impossible. So then he turns around and admits there does exist shared meanings of the term “beautiful” among different people.

Fourth, I show that shared meanings, in turn, implies “beautiful” must therefore be a concept-type existing independently of people’s token conceptions of it. (see 238, 240) In response, which is Anti’s final position up to date, consists in denying there are such things as type-concepts at all, but just indivdual tokens.

But the discussion turns right back on Anti to explain how shared meaning is possible if concept-types don’t exist, but only tokens. Anti just takes it as a brute fact that people *can *share meanings but then admits we don’t need any explanation for why this happens. In consequence, Anit is right back at step 3 still left without any explanation for how communication is possible at all.

 

[Syntax]

Isn’t it enough to say that we understand one another if we both use apples and firetrucks in many of the same ways?

No. It is not enough. That position is precisely what my argument is against. The burden of an explanation is on you to account for this “sameness-relation” between two tokens if concept-types and properties don’t exist. Like I said, I call this position “ostrich nominalim,” hiding your head in the sand and not facing this very phenomenon at hand which cries out for explanation. If you have another hypothesis alternative to my own, I’m all ears.

 

[Betterave]

Our concepts of things are abstractions from our experiences. They’re unique to each person – my mental image of a “mustard bottle” probably differs from yours in a thousand different ways – but they coincide on enough large points that we can talk about them and have a fair idea of what each of us is talking about. For example, I’ll bet your idea of “mustard bottle” is yellow, and that’s because the idea that each one of us has of “mustard bottle” is abstracted from similar experiences of similar data points.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s some magical concept of the “mustard bottle” that exists outside of our heads. “Mustard bottle” is the label we put on this idea that we’ve abstracted from our individual experience. My idea of a mustard bottle – similar though it may be to other peoples’ ideas of a mustard bottle – is unique to me and will die with me. But it’s similar enough that communication is possible.

As I said, you’re confusing the map with the territory. You think that concepts are things, and it’s really mixing you up.

Wow, this is some really confused/confusing stuff going down here!

Here’s something to think about:

I’ve been reading Anti’s Discourse on Mustard Bottles, and this business of labeling ideas naturally induced me to come up with a mental image of a Mustard Bottle. Big deal, right? But I just realized that the image that I came up with was not associated with any real mustard bottle that I’ve ever experienced! It was made of glass and had a funny shape like a bottle of syrup, but naturally it contained that yellow stuff which I am accustomed to labeling with the term ‘mustard’; then I thought about real mustard bottles I’m familiar with and they aren’t like that at all! How do explain that?

Anyway, this business about real ideas in your head being unique and dying with you - that’s clearly whack and not what you should be saying (I humbly submit). If there are no identity conditions that hold for moral concepts so that moral concepts can’t be called objective, that’s certainly also the case for ‘ideas in my head.’ The identity of your idea with itself is no more objectively assertible than the identity of your idea with mine - they’re *all * Wittgenstinian ‘beetles in boxes’ that no one can look at. If there is no criterion by which we can affirm or deny the identity of your idea with mine, then surely there is no criterion by which we can affirm or deny the identity of my ideas with themselves.

So I don’t think you want to say that you label your ideas. You label things. Your ‘having an idea (concept)’ is reducible to your labeling different things with the same label. An idea is different from an image (remember Locke and triangles?). So what do you take yourself to be labeling when you say “you enjoy A” or “I enjoy B”???

Anyway, map and territory… What do you mean? If a map is really a map, there must be a territory which it is mapping. A random set of lines on a piece of paper that has no correspondence to any real territory is not a map. So maybe you want to try Leela’s strategy: we’re not making maps, though we think we might be; we’re building a house. We might have blueprints, but they’re to help us with building and maintaining the house; they’re not maps of some independent reality we’ve discovered. But that option is only open to you if you can explain how morality gets excluded, since this ‘house building’ project is clearly an objective one - unless nothing is objective, ‘science’ and rational argument and all that are just matters of purely personal preference too.

Anti wrote:

Here’s the point: value claims do have a consistent meaning. “I like” always and everywhere means, “The person speaking enjoys X.” Meanwhile, “I dislike” always and everywhere means, “The person speaking does not enjoy X.”

So what does this mean?

Adam’s assertion “I like X” (or “I enjoy X”) grounds Bob’s assertion “Adam likes X” (or “Adam enjoys X”)

…and that’s your point?

 

[Syntax]

**Words put things in relation to other things **can be thought of as relations all the way down rather than having essences or substances to which all their properties are supposed to adhere.

This is clearly false. My word “greater-than” doesn’t make the following relation hold between the number 5 and the number 4,

“5 > 4”

That relation exists independently of my words. And the relation holds because of these very numerical properties essential to the number 5 and to the number 4. Without the different numerical properties of 5 and 4, the relation would *not *hold. This is precisely why we cannot switch the terms on each side of the “>” sign and preserve the original statement’s truth-value, for “4>5” would be false. Your view doesn’t make any sense.

And “relations all the way down”? You need to explain what that means. I don’t understand it.

 

[Betterave]

And “relations all the way down”? You need to explain what that means. I don’t understand it.

That same thought occurred to me… I think perhaps that it’s a first principle of pragmatic metaphysics.

 

[Holly3278]

Morality definitely exists. If morality didn’t exist then why do we have so many laws that uphold moral principles such as the law against murdering and the law against stealing?

 

[Syntax]

That same thought occurred to me… I think perhaps that it’s a first principle of pragmatic metaphysics.

I know! Even worse, 2-place relational predicates can’t be rightfully said to hold between any two things without specifying the nature of what is being related. How would I know x=y is true unless I first knew what “x” and “y” stood for?

 

[Betterave]

I don’t think we need Platonic notions of types to unravel such sentences. Words put things in relation to other things can be thought of as relations all the way down rather than having essences or substances to which all their properties are supposed to adhere. Saying that the firetrucks and apples are both red is putting firetrucks and apples in relation to one another. We don’t have to imagine an extra term “redness” as existing “out there” to make these sentences true and worry about establishing correct isomorphisms between my ideas, your ideas, and reality if such sentences are tools for coping with reality rather than representations of reality. Isn’t it enough to say that we understand one another if we both use apples and firetrucks in many of the same ways?

Best,
Leela

Is a tool useful by itself? Don’t we need a representation of the reality in relation to which we are going to use the tool, before the tool can realize its tooly essence?

“such sentences are tools for coping with reality rather than representations of reality” - is this claim itself not a representation of reality? Isn’t it nonsense? (TLP 7: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.)

 

[Syntax]

Is a tool useful by itself? Don’t we need a representation of the reality in relation to which we are going to use the tool, before the tool can realize its tooly essence?.

Nice, Heidegger!

“such sentences are tools for coping with reality rather than representations of reality” - is this claim itself not a representation of reality? Isn’t it nonsense? (TLP 7: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.)

Nice, Wittgenstein! Lol!